Is anyone else struggling with the obvious unfairness of this issue

Also what helps is making connections with other women and feminists. I've honestly met some of the most best people over the years due to this shitshow. The bravest, kindest, most indefatigable, intelligent and thoughtful people ever.

Not had time to rtft, just wanted to offer and thought this thread might be of use:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a4190873-Im-just-angry-all-the-time-anyone-else?msgid=105522393#105522393

It's affecting my mental health too. When Facebook went down I could feel myself relax. When it came back up, the first post on my timeline was someone ranting about TERFs.

I'm autistic and in a woke political party so my social media is full of debates about gender. It's hard to escape it.

Also as I heard there had been an arrest for SM hate crime? A footballer (which is good)

Not sure of detail why people like JKR had no recourse for hate crime against her on same platform.

Or did she maybe I missed it

I think women saying no collectively is worth it.

I do it for me but also dd and ds too actually.

Me too. I am terrified for my daughter. For my son too, but I have never been so concerned about the rights of females.

It's the sheer Orwellian nature of the times that is disturbing. There'll be a story in a newspaper about a woman who was randomly murdered by a man - random in the sense that there was no personal motivation behind the murder, but not random in the sense that had a man been walking down that same street he was as likely to be murdered by the killer as a woman - and then further down the page will be an opinion piece stating that nobody can tell a woman from a man, that male sex-offenders in women-only spaces are, in fact, victims of bigotry, that women are privileged to be women and full of hatred for men, that women's fears of male violence are moral panic. Worst of all, anyone who objects to this woman-hating ideology risks being sacked, rendered unemployable, vilified on a worldwide scale and prosecuted.

I think this feels scary because it's giving us a small taste of totalitarianism and the people who most ardently believe in gender ideology - for whom the Cultural Revolution, Year Zero and Stalinism aren't even a memory, just things in books they've never read - aren't just going to be indoctrinated crazies on Twitter in the near future, they'll be the people running everything. It feels like if it's not stopped now this is just a hint of how bad things will be for women, lesbians and gay men in times to come.

Fariha, don’t lose hope. I agree with others here who (like me) recall the 1970s. It was a more sexist time, but people were open to change. And we did change things! So radically, and wonderfully.

Women’s Liberation led the way, but we were struggling against old-fashioned attitudes, and society in general was open to progress. There wasn’t some powerful male-supremacist lobby actively working to abolish the rights we already had.

Genderism got a powerful start, because its supporters presented it as a harmless offshoot of gay rights. We’re already seeing the pushback, as people start to realise genderism isn’t at all harmless.

It is horrific to see misogyny so triumphant at present. But remember how often things have been worse, eg suffragettes being beaten up in the streets and force-fed in prison. Always, the madness eventually dies down. Common decency reasserts itself. We make progress again.

SpindleWhirl, replying belatedly to your query upthread - yes, I’m a retired hospital doctor.
And your point about the relative epidemic of young girls wanting to transition - I think any young girl growing up today, looking at porn damaged boys and the rape culture in schools, the demands for sexts, the expectation of choking and anal rape in sexual relationships, could be forgiven for wanting no part of being a woman.
Who in their right mind would cheerfully identify with such a vile picture of womanhood as sex toy and victim? I think they feel that, if they can’t sign up to that, they must really be transboys. And there is a whole industry and bandwagon cheerleading them aboard.

I'm so, so fucked off about unelected Carrie Johnson turning up at the Tory Conference with the odious Crispin 'Back Room Deal' Blunt and Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley, to talk - apparently on behalf of her husband, she suggested - about areas of policy.

Crispin Blunt was absolutely vile to Liz Truss in the House of Commons when she announced that self-ID was on hold and not going ahead. Stonewall and its fans went into spasms. Blunt accused Truss of ignoring a done deal already worked out behind the scenes (which was grimly fascinating); and then of being incompetent.

But Truss appears to be supported by Johnson, being promoted in the Cabinet reshuffle to one of the great offices of state, and keeping the Women & Equalities portfolio too.

What are the Tories up to? What's Boris Johnson's real thinking on this? How dangerous is Carrie Johnson, whether wittingly or unwittingly, as she hints she has the PM's ear? Was she playing Blunt and Kelley, talking of 'extending' rights? Or is she playing us, while we put our trust in Truss? What did she even mean with her remarks on banning conversation therapy? What sorts, for which children? Banning psychological therapies for distressed children, maybe? Is she an expert?

And what do I need to worry about now? Fuck's sake.

You’re not alone. I feel rage and despair, but then I realise that the vast majority know that gender ideology is rubbish and that helps.

@JustSpeculation interesting question. I suppose I've always thought of it as a continuum with man and woman on opposite ends, with variations in between but that then puts me in mind of that awful Mermaids 'Gender Spectrum' with a Barbie on one side and a GI Joe on the other.

I suppose I think of it in a similar way to the 'political spectrum' of left and right wing but I've also seen it it illustrated as a kind of Venn diagram, with intersecting areas.

Hmm, you've made me properly think about it!

I got the impression that Donnie in that clip was using it in this metaphorical sense.

Yep, and I never noticed and found fault with that use, having seen it many times. I only spotted it in this very discussion.

And I'm sure a lot of people are just meaning "there's lots of them, not just 2". Or "there's no clear dividing line".

But when you get Scientific American having an infographic trying to put DSDs on a line, it's time to nit-pick a little...

(I've ranted about things-that-aren't-spectrums before - here's a link to my Ovarit post on it, for real geeks only).

But "spectrum" can be used metaphorically, as in "broad spectrum antibiotic". But the difference there is that no one is actually claiming you can line up antibiotics in order. I got the impression that Donnie in that clip was using it in this metaphorical sense.

There is a difference between saying "a spectrum of genders" and "gender is a spectrum".

Perhaps!

@NecessaryScene

Thanks for that. I have never seen that film. But it's about time I did, perhaps!

Although I note rewatching that that Donnie himself (mis)uses "spectrum" as a counterpoint to the Life Line.

I was thinking the Life Line as shown there would be a spectrum, but it's not, because there's nothing between fear and love, only mixtures of them. It's like a red-magenta-blue fade line.

So we have a similar situation. The Life Line is wrong because not everything is just a mixture of Love and Fear - there are more than 2 emotions. But Donnie's wrong to call human emotion a "spectrum" because you couldn't sort them in order.

Similarly sex is not a spectrum, because there really are just two of them - Male and Female. And you can't draw a "Sex Line" because you can't really measure proportions for a "mix"- and even if you could a "mixture" doesn't make a spectrum. But genders are not a spectrum either because you couldn't sort them in order.

Sex is clearly not a spectrum, of course. But how is gender a spectrum, either?

Correct. It isn't. You couldn't stick them on a line.

Or even sort them in a multidimensional space. No-one could agree on the axes, or even the values.

Some of this reminds me of the classic scene from Donnie Darko. I'd like to imagine them sorting genders on the Life Line.

(Do check out "jack dalziel"s comment on that video...)

And I have never ever voted conservative before but will now. They are the only party upholding women’s rights at the moment.

Yes I am starting to get more and more angry. Especially when characters like David Lammy call us ‘dinosaurs’. How dare he…

[quote Waitwhat23]@Daisyxo we have seen many, many posters insist that sex is a spectrum. We have seen dodgy YouTube videos given as 'evidence' that this is so. Sex and gender is being deliberately conflated by organisations such as Stonewall.

Sex is immutable and binary. It is unchanging.

Gender is a social construct and is indeed on a spectrum.

There is no such thing as a 'sex change' operation. There are certainly some cosmetic changes which can be made (breast implants for example) but no operation can make someone 'change sex'.[/quote]
Forgive me, but I need to ask a question here.

Sex is clearly not a spectrum, of course. But how is gender a spectrum, either?

The term "spectrum" implies some sort of organisation, some way in which the conditions on the spectrum identifiably vary from each other in a progressive sense along a continuum from one extreme to the other. So you need to be able to identify and define these extremes for the continuum to make any kind of sense.

So tetrisgender varies from agender in which direction along the continuum and how do you know?

For me it's the whole plethora of the appalling situations of women around the world. The current constant stream of just women and girls being treated appalling in such a massive range of ways.

The incredibly slow, patchy rate of progress we make. If any at all and what we gain can be reversed so fast. It's happened and continues to happen. This is all about various countries, some better some worse. Some at huge risk of women being put back to square 1. The square where we are essentially back to being low or no value. To do as we are told. To be tightly controlled etc.

Eg recently the reversal of all the massive progress for women and girls (and men and boys) just wiped out in such a short space of time in Afghanistan.

I've been a feminist forever and these things still anger me. Still are felt deeply.

Add on top of all that shit.

Seemingly all of the orgs in just about anything where women had anything for us, about us, protecting us. Just change massive things behind the scenes. Keep it quiet for so long. NHS wards unisex. Female prisons unisex. Awards for our achievements in any number of areas. Unisex. I mean even GG and all women shortlists unisex. Even though GG are now breaking their charter and the law and excluding groups of girls. And opening women's shortlists to some male people not all is in law discrimination and illegal....

And on top of all THAT. Taking the very words that we need to talk about our lives our issues. To gather as one and march, agitate. Not just woman girl. But the words sex and female are going as we speak. To see this endorsed so widely.

And the myriad ways the language is used totally inconsistently.

Menstruators in the UK.
Women in Afghanistan.
Men men men men no change.

It's so obviously a load of nonsense and targeted at girls and women only. And political parties NHS police etc all just going along with it.

Yes it's totally shit.

When it gets too much. Just give yourself a break from it. Do things that make you happy and relaxed. Let it drop further back in your thoughts.

Thank you to all the women posting here . Yes our mental health is being severel6 affected but this is seen as nothing in comparison to the most discriminated against and vulnerable males. Our anger makes us stronger and just occasionally we are able to make a difference, maybe on an individual level by talking about our concerns and politics. Recently I felt enormously cheered after numerous fallings out with friends, to meet in real life other strong active rad fem women including young women who have resisted. But I still can’t believe it has come to this and weep for what we have lost.

OP, I agree it is unfair and @EmbarrassingAdmissions
I agree with your post on one of the key issues being the global male "ownership of women's bodies".

There's still a long battle to go. We may have the vote, the right to apply for work of our choosing, but we still end up with a pay gap, at risk of male violence, and viewed as body parts

We WOMEN need to look out for each other. It's good to share on here and not feel swamped by it.

I swing between rage and despair whenever I think about it and I think about it a lot.
My mumbled rants around the kitchen are like a broken record.

I feel exactly the same, the NHS whistle blower article sent me to the edge today, thank god I found this thread, it’s really helped me feel less alone.